


Of Corvegas and Whiskey

by keycat



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Drinking & Talking, Fluff, Gen, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 11:49:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9383663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keycat/pseuds/keycat
Summary: Sole Survivor and Danse crash for the night and discuss cars and pre-war life, among other things.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Maxson will be playing the role of "Sir Not Appearing in this Fic", so if you're here for Maxson and Danse hashing out feelings or what have you, there will be none, sorry, lol
> 
> (if it's an issue though i'll un-tag it as maxson/danse because it really is /such/ a minor thing here)

The old Corvega jutted into the road just far enough to be in the way, just enough that Charley had to skirt her slim body between it and the guardrail. She sighed, letting her fingers trail over the pitted and rusted fender as she walked by it, hooking her fingers gently into the broken socket of its headlight, feeling the sharp, cracked edges, and continuing on her way.

Danse watched her curiously. It was full dark, but he had seen her clearly. He caught her doing that a lot lately, and the first time he’d seen her do it, he assumed it was a nostalgia for a world lost, a moment of silence for the world she knew and the husband she’d lost, and he dutifully allowed her to grieve in silence. But then she did it again, and again, and now it seemed like every car they walked past, she would sigh wistfully and absently feel its cracked, ruined body. His curiosity was peaked, even though they were supposed to be finding shelter, even though it was tactically irresponsible, he wanted to know what was going through her head. The night was still and quiet, and they’d patrolled this area of the Commonwealth hundreds of times and never seen even a single bloatfly. It would...probably be alright.

“Why do you do that?” he asked, his deep voice piercing the stillness, making her jump and almost startling even himself.

“Hm? Do what?” Charley asked, whipping around, jerking her hand close to her body like the car had suddenly become hot, or like he’d caught her touching something she shouldn’t.

“Lately I’ve noticed you’ve taken a fascination with some obsolete pre-war technology.” Danse gestured to the Corvega with the muzzle of his rifle. “Cars, mostly.”

Charley rubbed her jaw with the back of her hand and tried to smile good-naturedly, tried to brush it off like it was nothing. “Uh--nothing, it’s silly. Don’t worry about it. I’ll stop.”

“It’s not a problem,” Danse said, holstering his rifle and stepping closer to the car. He was going to have climb over it, no way he was going to fit between that gap Charley had squeezed through, but something told him she would be heartbroken if he stepped on it, so instead, he surveyed the car, trying to discern it from the others he’d seen scattered over the Commonwealth. If he was being honest with himself, he saw no difference, but the way Charley was acting, he suspected this one was something special. “I’m just curious. You seem to really like them.”

Charley kept her sniper rifle tight in her hands, but her postured relaxed a bit. “Well...I do. Did, I guess. They’re no good now, you’d never get one running these days, but...I did like them. Then.”

Danse rapped a knuckle on the vehicle’s armored hull. Solid metal. He wondered what it was built to withstand. Gunfire? Open flames? Radiation? It didn’t seem to be  _ that  _ strong, though it was sleek, aerodynamic. Built for speed only, perhaps, not strength, and it only had room for one person in its cockpit, which was surrounded by a now-ruined glass dome. What had the Commonwealth looked like in the final stages of the war, that vehicles like these were scattered everywhere? What were they even used for? He’d seen advertisements around for them, but he’d never paid them any mind, much like with everything pre-war that didn’t interest the Brotherhood. It was unimportant, and he had much more pressing matters to be focusing on.

Charley, however, didn’t seem to share his mindset, which, he had to admit, frustrated him sometimes. He often found her--like right now--distracted by the most trivial of things. She had more than a few collections going, and seemed to pick up every piece of garbage they came across. 

She hoisted herself onto the hood of the car and threw her head back, crossing her legs at the ankles, leaving her rifle balanced carefully across her lap. “I always wanted one of these. God, I wanted one.”

“What for?” Danse asked, trying to maneuver himself over the guardrail to go around the car.

Charley shrugged. “To have. I liked how it looks. How it sounds. How it moves…” She let the ‘o’ stretch out, and lay back against the car as she did so, closing her eyes and throwing both arms over her face. “They said it could break the sound barrier. It wasn’t true, obviously. But can you  _ imagine _ ?”

“That’s a lot faster than any human being needs to be going,” Danse said, trying to remember the speed at which the sound barrier broke. Something like seven hundred miles per hour? He knew the Prydwen was capable of fifty or so with a decent tailwind, the vertibirds capable of about a hundred and fifty, and that was plenty fast enough for him.

“Hm. You never struck me as the type to like to take things slow, paladin,” Charley said, now stretching her arms over her head, a small smile playing at her lips.

“ _ Excuse me _ ?” Danse meant to sound authoritative, to stop her in her tracks. He could tell exactly what she was playing at, and he would have no part in it. Instead, though, he fell short, sounding merely surprised. Charley peeked up at him through her lashes, and it only incensed him further. He was  _ not  _ playing games with her.

“Nothing,” she said, sitting up and smoothing out her ratty fatigues. Danse had tried talking her into wearing her power armor more often, the thought of her wearing practically nothing was a constant source of anxiety for him, especially during a firefight. He was always keeping one eye on her, instead of both on the task at hand, but she insisted that she didn’t need armor, that it got in the way of her ability to properly snipe.

“Charley…” Danse warned, watching her check to make sure her rifle was loaded. He needed to make sure knew that whatever it was she was playing at, it wasn’t happening, and to get it out of her head immediately.

“ _ What _ ?” she said petulantly, hopping off the hood of the car and throwing her rifle over her back. “Come on, we need to find shelter for the night, stop asking me about cars. No more talking. Rifles out. Let’s move.”

Danse gritted his teeth and followed her, making sure to scrape his leg against the front end of the Corvega as he walked by. One of these days, he swore, this girl was going to put him in the ground.

 

***

 

“Come on, just sit in it. Just sit behind the wheel and imagine you’re out on the open road.”

“Charley. No.” Danse said, busily digging a part of a stingwing from his armor. Fortunately the house they’d managed to find that was free of ghouls and other such nasties also had, for some reason, a power armor dock in the garage. It also had--among other things--a rusted out Pick-R-Up, getting Charley started on her car fascination again. He was beginning to regret asking.

“You’re no fun at all,” she pouted, slumping in the single seat of the truck, trying to turn the seized-up wheel back and forth to no avail.

“It’s not my job to be fun,” Danse said, using the butt end of a wrench to try and scrape the wing from inside his elbow joint. Christ, these things were sticky.

Charley rested her chin on the top of the wheel and looked longingly out the windshield at the barred wooden doors of the garage. “My dad had a truck just like this one.”

“Yeah?”

“Same color, too.”

“What, rusted brown?”

“Yeah, actually.” Charley fiddled around the steering column. The keys were still there and she gave them a gentle tug. Stuck fast. She sighed. “It was old, yeah, but he couldn’t afford a new one. Things were definitely different back then. He had to go to work five days a week, came home to the same place every night, didn’t even lock his doors at night because he knew he didn’t have to, we didn’t have to worry about drugged up raiders or ferals breaking down our door and murdering us over a can of beans.” She swatted at the dangling keychain. It was shaped like a bottle of Nuka Cola, painted flat brown but most of the paint had chipped off and one of the fins had broken, exposing the muddy transparent resin the thing had been cast from.

Danse had paused working on his armor to listen to Charley. He honestly couldn’t picture it. Going to work, five days a week, whatever that entailed.

“He never killed anyone, either, can you believe that? It wasn’t even something I ever  _ thought _ I would do. I just thought I was a good person and that it would never happen, you know? I never even thought I would fire a gun.”

Danse tried to picture the world she described, but he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He knew people, knew how they acted. How had they managed to hold it together for as long as they had, without things breaking down into total chaos? Hell, he thought the way things were  _ now  _ was asking a lot of people, expecting a lot of civil behavior from a species that wasn’t capable of offering it without going against a lot of their baser urges.

Charley stepped out of the truck and let the door swing shut behind her with a loud screech and a clank. She leaned against it and put her hands, palms down, on it’s side, feeling the rust flake off under her fingers. “That car we saw earlier. It was a Corvega Rocket 69. You didn’t know that, did you?”

“Can’t say that I did,” Danse said, going back to his armor.

“Life is a race. Win,” she quoted, and Danse knew that one. It was the ad on the billboards. He’d seen their fading colors and peeling paper and remembered their slogan. “The commercials were always on TV. I always thought,  _ someday. _ ” She opened her hand and looked at the Nuka Cola keychain she’d yanked free from the Pick-R-Up. “I guess some things are just a pipe dream.” She fell silent, and Danse could tell her mind was wandering.

“I’m going to go get ready to bunk down, find some mattresses that aren’t too moldy,” she said suddenly. “You come in when you’re done here.” She strode past him without a second glance, leaving him scowling as he continued his work.

 

***

 

Danse arrived an hour or so later into the house to find Charley sitting on an old bedroll, another situated beside her, and an assortment of bottles arranged between them and a lantern tucked under a broken end table, throwing just enough light on her to see, but not enough that it could be seen easily from outside. She had another in her hand, and he could see she’d already drank a fair amount from it. 

“Put that away,” Danse said, sitting down on his bedroll, scooting it a foot or so further from her, and unlacing his boots. “I want to be up early tomorrow.”

“I’m fine,” Charley said. “I can hold my liquor, thank you.” She took a swig from it and passed it to him. “Can you?”

Danse shook his head. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter.”

“Woah!” Charley cried, reeling back. “You don’t  _ know _ ? You’ve never drank before?”

“I need my wits about me at all times. Besides, I-- _ was-- _ expected to maintain a level of decorum at all times.” He lay flat on his back and folded his hands behind his head. “I suggest you go to sleep.”

Charley opened a second bottle. “Come on, Danse, loosen up. It’ll be good for you.”

Danse hesitated. “No,” he said, but his voice was lacking conviction. If he wasn’t lying to himself, he had always been curious about what it would like to drink, just a little. The other soldiers seemed to enjoy it. And at the very least, he’d be here, with Charley, who he trusted enough to at least make sure he didn’t make an ass of himself, and if he did, well, she’d be the only one who ever knew.

“What, you gonna tell me that the Brotherhood doesn’t drink? Please. Maxson drinks likes it’s going out of style. And if Maxson does it, it can’t be all bad, yeah?” Charley said, holding the bottle out to him, waggling it in just such a way to make the insides slosh around.

With a huff, Danse swept himself up into a lotus position and snatched the bottle from her. “Fine,” he said. He took a draught and immediately sputtered, earning a round of laughter from Charley. “What  _ is  _ that?”

“It’s whiskey,” Charley said, still laughing and trying to catch her breath. “Oh, my God. Oh, man. That was funny.”

“It’s...different,” Danse said, ignoring her laughter and putting a hand to his throat.

“Yeah, it’s supposed to be, supposed to burn going down. Feels good, right?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Here, take another sip. Don’t drink so much this time, though. It’s not Nuka. You’re supposed to do shots. Here, do it like this,” Charley said, taking the cap and pouring a small bit into it. “Just knock this back. Like this.” She threw her head back and tipped the capful of whiskey down her throat, ending with a satisfied smacking of her lips and slamming the cap down on the floor between them. “Alright, now you do it. Same thing, do it the same way I did.”

Danse picked up the cap as soon as she’d filled it, and raised an eyebrow. “Do I have to?”

“Yes. That’s how we did it 200 years ago. Just do it, come on.”

He rolled his eyes, but threw it back the same way she did, ending by slamming it down on the floor the same way she had. “I don’t think I like it,” he said. “It tastes terrible.”

“Alright, we’ll try vodka, then,” Charley said, setting aside the bottle and picking up a second. She swirled the clear liquid around and peered in it, checking for something, Danse couldn’t tell what, and then passed it to him. “Here, you don’t have to do shots, but don’t chug it. Just take a sip of it.”

Cautiously, Danse took an experimental sip of the vodka, and then another, much larger one. “I’m not sure this is right,” he said, unnoticing of Charley’s eyes going wide in surprise. “There’s no burn, nothing.”

Charley gently took the bottle back and capped it. “Vodka’s supposed to be like that. You should probably slow it down, though, if you’ve  _ never  _ drank before.”

Danse began to feel a warmth spreading inside him that he couldn’t explain, felt his cheeks flush, but ignored it. “I think I’m alright.”

“Nope, you’re not, you’re already getting a little flushed.” Charley flung her arms around the bottles and dragged them closer to her, collecting them into a heap on her bedroll. “That’s enough for you, I think.”

He frowned. “Last I checked,  _ I  _ was  _ your  _ commanding officer. You don’t tell me what to do.”

“That’s gonna hit you like a truck if you don’t stop, and that’s not gonna be a very becoming look on you. Besides, I’m paladin now, so we’re on equal footing,” Charley said, taking another draught. She didn’t mind Danse still strutting around and giving her orders and acting as though he were her superior still. She knew it was probably the only thing keeping him sane. 

“No,” he said, and he had to suppress a grin. “Like a Corvega Rocket 69.”

Charley groaned and threw her head back. “Alright,  _ definitely  _ no more alcohol for you. Come on, we should probably pack it up and go to sleep.” She started picking up the bottles and lining them up on the broken stereo behind her.

Danse watched her set some down gently, and toss others. He was sure there was some sort of method to her sorting, but he suspected there was a lengthy explanation involving very detailed descriptions of various types of alcohol, and he yawned. He could live without the history lesson.

She finished putting away the last bottle and was just reaching for the lantern when Danse made a small noise in his throat to get her attention.

“Hm?” she said, her hand frozen in midair. “Something wrong?”

“I wanted to thank you.”

“For the alcohol? I wouldn’t, it’s probably going to kill us, it’s so old.”

“No.” Danse shifted uncomfortably. “Ever since my exile, you’ve been there for me in ways I don’t think you even realize. And I just wanted to say I appreciate it.”

“That’s the alcohol talking,” Charley said, snickering, and reaching for the lantern again.

“Maybe. It’s really more that it’s...emboldened me to say something I’ve wanted to say for a while.”

Charley rocked back onto her ankles and raised an eyebrow. “Danse, you’re not--”

“Just listen,” he said, cutting her off. “I just...I need to know that what we’re doing out here, we’re making a difference. We’re helping the Brotherhood any way we can, from the sidelines. I need to know that when you and I aren’t together, that’s what you’re doing. I see you with ghouls and mercenaries and raiders and I trust you, I do, but...sometimes I wonder if you have the Brotherhood’s best interest in mind, and...I just need to know that you do.”

Charley was silent. “You miss him, don’t you?”

“More than anything.” Danse scrubbed a hand over his face. “I sometimes think that it would be worth it to go back to Prydwen, to be captured and killed, just to see him one more time...if only I wasn’t certain he’d be the one to pull the trigger.”

The sudden shift in mood was sobering, and Charley fidgeted in her lap, picking at her perpetually broken fingernails. She wasn’t sure what to say. “He still loves you, Danse.”

Danse snorted. “No, he doesn’t. I know Arthur. He’s not a sentimental man.”

Charley fell silent. Danse probably knew Maxson better than anyone. He was probably right. She had no idea what to say to him, there didn’t seem to be anything, not really.

Before she even realized what she was doing, she found herself on her feet, tugging Danse by the wrist. “Come on. Let’s go for another walk. Real quick.”

“I don’t really think that’s appropriate.”

“I wasn’t  _ asking. _ ”

Exasperated, Danse allowed himself to be pulled to his feet, and then took his hand from her grip. “Where are we going?”

“Does it matter?”

“Charley, the Commonwealth is a dangerous--”

“So bring your gun, geez. Come on.” She slung her sniper rifle over her back and walked out the door. Danse put out the lantern and made for the garage, until he heard Charley call over her shoulder, “and no power armor!”

***

 

“I don’t understand what we’re doing.”

Charley took a deep breath of the night air and let it out in a contented sigh. “I used to do this all the time when I was younger. I didn’t grow up in Boston, you know. I actually grew up in New Hampshire. Summers in New Hampshire were so... _ different. _ ”

“You’re not being clear.”

“A night like this…” Charley walked along the crumbled and faded yellow line in the middle of the road. “It used to be so peaceful. There was nothing that couldn’t be made better by taking a long walk in the middle of the night.”

Danse kept close behind her, but seemed to be only humoring her. “I suppose the area is generally safe. It’s not in our best interest to let our guard down, but--”

“Don’t think like a soldier, just for a minute, okay?” Charley had spotted another car on the side of the road, and she went to it. “Just try and relax, embrace the peacefulness of the night, you know?” She walked directly up to the hood of the car, bending over and placing both hands on it, a bittersweet smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “It’s an Atomic V8,” she said, turning around so fast that Danse stopped in his tracks.

“What about it?”

Charley sat on the bumper and traced her fingers over the grill, as was her habit these days. “This was Nate’s first car.” She was suddenly seventeen again, the summer was fading and the nights were getting long, she was wearing those ridiculous white booty shorts her mother had yelled at her for wearing, she was sitting on the hood of Nathan Howard’s Corvega…

_ “Charley, come on, get off, you’ll scratch the paint!” _

_ She giggled. “You have to take me for a ride in it, first.” _

_ “Come on, you know I can’t, it’s my dad’s car, come on--” _

_ “You said it was yours!” she slid off anyway and danced around to his side, swatting at a mosquito. “Can’t you just take me for one ride?” _

_ “I--don’t know, it’s...it’s getting dark…” _

“Charley,” Danse said, interrupting her thoughts.

“Hm?”

“I’m...just gonna head back, alright?” He turned and started walking away before even getting a response, leaving her sitting on the car, a growing emptiness taking root inside her.

Danse didn’t hear her coming, only felt her surprisingly strong grip on his shoulder, and then being whipped around. “Wha--”

“I lost everything, too, dammit,” Charley said, and Danse was shocked to see that her eyes were glistening wet.

“I--”

“Maxson’s still alive, and I would  _ kill _ to know that Nate’s still alive. I wouldn’t even care if he didn’t love me anymore--just knowing that he’s out there somewhere, that he’s happy, that would be enough for me,” she snapped, angrily swiping a hand over her eyes. “And the one person left in my family who is still alive--you and Maxson and your whole fucking Brotherhood expect me to help you murder him.”

“That  _ person  _ is responsible for creating me, playing God when he had no right--”

“Just gonna wish you’d never been born, then, huh? That’s the card you’re playing? Christ, you’re so dramatic.” Charley threw her hands up, turned on her heel, and stalked back to the Corvega. She plunked down it, resting her elbows on her knees and angrily kicking a pebble between her feet. He could go ahead and be dramatic, for all she cared. Hell, he could go right up to the Prydwen, it’d serve him right, she was just trying to help…

After it seemed like half an hour had passed, Charley noticed Danse approaching in her peripheral vision, but didn’t bother to look up until he’d carefully sat down on the bumper next to her.

“I feel like I owe you an apology.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Charley murmured, her anger subsided; she was now idly toeing a different pebble back and forth.

Danse put a hand on her shoulder, and she glanced over at him. “You’ve given me a lot to think about. And...I think you were right. About the night, and the walks, and the...uh...peacefulness,” he said, letting his hand slip and fall into his lap. “It really cleared my head, I think.”

Charley gave him a wry smile. “I told you it would.”

“Do you...uh…” he ran a hand through his hair and let it rest on the back of his neck. “Do you have any other, sort of...nighttime rituals that you partook in when you were younger?”

“I can think of one.”

 

***

 

It had taken a lot of effort from Danse’s power armor, a lot more effort that he was beginning to think would be worth, to force the Pick-R-Up out of the garage and into the open air.

“Those wheels don’t turn anymore, you know that, right?” Danse said, panting, watching Charley emerge from the house with their bedrolls bundled up in her arms and another bottle of whiskey in one hand.

“I know. It’s seized up. Which means it’s not going anywhere else. Now get out of your power armor.” She tossed the bedrolls into the bed of the truck and set to work spreading them out. They overlapped slightly, but she suspected it wouldn’t be an issue.

“Okay, now what? I don’t understand,” Danse said, having shed his power armor, and was now peering over the side of the bed.

“Just get in.” Charleu scooted over and patted the roll next to her. Confused, Danse obliged, and Charley opened the bottle of whiskey again.

Danse looked around. “I don’t follow. We’re...sleeping out here? I don’t see a legitimate tactical reason for this.”

Charley passed him the whiskey. “Just a sip. There’s no tactical reason for it. Just, okay, here, give that back, now lie back and look up. What do you see?”

Narrowing his eyes and wondering if he was about to become the victim of some prank, he cautiously did as he was asked, and searched the air above him. “Um...nothing. There’s nothing there. What am I supposed to see?” He started to sit back up, but Charley shoved him back down and lay down next to him.

“Look, look at the stars. Look at them all.”

“Stars?”

“Yes, Danse. Stars.”

Danse was silent, and took in the night sky. A warm breeze tickled past them, but beyond that, it was completely quiet. Charley took another sip of the whiskey, thinking that it was the closest to--

“How long do we do this for?”

“I’m going to wring your neck,” Charley snapped, brandishing the bottle, and Danse held his hands up, palms out, then covered his mouth with one, trying to hide a smile.

“Sorry,” he said. “Help me out here. What are we looking at?”

“Well, there’s constellations. I’m not really sure where any of them are anymore, but I think…” she pointed. “... _ that  _ one is Orion. The hunter. Kinda like Grognak, you know, the comic book character.”

Danse let out a quiet “ooooh”, but Charley could tell he didn’t see it, and they both knew no amount of gesturing and pointing was going to make him see it, so they both let the matter drop with a quiet chuckle.

“Let me see that again,” Danse said, taking the whiskey back. He took a long drink, and then set it down. “I think I get why you used to do this. It is peaceful. I’m...actually enjoying myself. Thank you.”

“Thank  _ you.  _ For trusting me.” Charley stretched out onto her back, put her arms behind her head, and let her eyes flutter closed. “Things’ll get better. I promise.”

Danse put the cap on the whiskey and tossed it over the edge of the truck. “I think they already are.”


End file.
